Jerry Yan’s rags to riches past

In an interview with NHK news a few days ago, Taiwanese actor-singer Jerry Yan poignantly touched on his growing-up years in a single-parent family.

Before Jerry shot to stardom from his breakout role in Meteor Garden back in 2001, the 33-year-old actor shared that he had an impoverished childhood growing up in a single-parent family. Jerry’s father passed away due to an illness when the actor was 12 years old, and his mother singlehandedly raised him and his sister up by doing tailoring work.

The suave and charming idol revealed that he started doing odd jobs when he was in Primary 5 to help with the household expenses. He said that the refrigerator at home “was so old that it started to leak electricity” and “cement would sometimes drip from the ceiling at home.”

Referring his mother as “the most important woman in my life”, he shared that the deepest impression he had of her was “the view of her back.”

“Mom would always be sitting down for long periods of time while tailoring the clothes and my elder sister and I would be at one corner doing household chores,” he said.

Inspired to provide his mother with a better life, Jerry has no qualms working hard and spending his income on his mother. To shield her from the limelight, he will “reject all promotional events and advertorials that have requested for us to appear together.”

He is the first Chinese star to be interviewed on the NHK program and the episode will be aired in Japan on the 27th this month. He was introduced as one of the “Top Stars” in the Chinese pop culture scene.